With Adele's performing status still up in the air, we've taken to revisiting past live shows whenever we need a good cry. The latest: an understated take of 21 track "Turning Tables" filmed for Live From the Artists Den, the PBS series which pairs artists with historic venues for intimate live performances. The 2012 season of the popular series kicks off on Feb. 3 with Adele's previously recorded show at the Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club last February, where she drew a celebrity crowd that included Glee stars Dianna Agron, Amber Riley and Naya Rivera (plus, eh, Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes). Casually sitting legs-crossed in her signature all-black ensemble, Adele is accompanied by only a piano player and her sassy diva fingers, which somehow manage to fully evoke every confused jilted-meets-heartbroken feeling the song packs within its four minutes. The countdown to the Grammy Awards, and what we hope is a stellar opening performance from the 23-year-old, is on. Until then, remember what it's like to watch her kill it below.

Kohl's Anschluss: Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev, in their different ways, may yet confound the world. (editorial)

The Economist (US) February 17, 1990 D- DAY is just a month away. Deutschland-day, that is, when the two Germanies will become one in fact if not in law. Pencil in March 19th, the morrow of East Germany's first (and almost certainly last) free election. The timetable for unity has shortened dramatically after last weekend's triumphant trip to Moscow by the West German chancellor, Mr Helmut Kohl, who won an assurance from Mr Mikhail Gorbachev that he would not stand in the way. Both men, it seemed, were simply being sensible. Why try to block the irresistible force of history?

Irresistible as it may be, history would be moving more slowly had it not received a sharp shove or two. First, and most obviously, from Mr Gorbachev; his support for reform encouraged the East Germans to breach the Berlin Wall (though in doing so they went further than Mr Gorbachev meant them to). Since then, less noticed, another history maker has been at work: Mr Kohl.

It is a great advantage for any politician to be consistently under-rated by opponents. "Bumbly" and "wobbly" are the sort of adjectives associated with Mr Kohl. Yet he is a Buster Douglas among politicians: just when you think he is out for the count, he turns round and delivers a knockout punch. Inside Germany, he has repeatedly caught rivals of balance and left them wondering what hit them. Now he is applying his deceptively lumbering technique to foreign policy, and is leaving the rest of the world feeling dizzy.

Mr Kohl has used the momentum of events to throw his considerable weight behind them, and speed them up. Back in November, he suddenly produced his ten-point plan for unity-to the annoyance of his French, British and American allies, whom he had not consulted in advance. The plan for the first time made unity seem graspable; the question was no longer whether, but when and how. Mr Kohl and his foreign minister, Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then made sure that nothing got in the way: not the West, not the East, not the Bundesbank. In this their main ally has been the crisis in East Germany. The crisis has been real, with nearly 3,000 East Germans emigrating each day on top of the 344,000 who went west in 1989, but it has also provided a handy argument for joining the Germanies together at breakneck speed. website kohls coupons printable

Mr Kohl has kept the western allies quiet by reasonably i) reminding them that they have long said they favoured unity; (ii) hinting that any public misgivings would risk a rift with West Germany and create instability by intensifying worries in East Germany; and (iii) reassuring them that a future Germany would be committed to NATO. Mr Kohl proceeded to bulldoze his way over the supposedly bulldozer-proof Bundesbank's resistance to almost instant monetary union with East Germany. There is even a suspicion that his government talked up the crisis in the East, making monetary union seem the only way of avoiding East German collapse and an unmanageable flood of refugees into West Germany. see here kohls coupons printable

Exaggerated or not, the atmosphere of emergency helped Mr Kohl hastily to arrange last week's meeting with Mr Gorbachev. He could take to Moscow the message that: (i) unity was now unstoppable; (ii) any Soviet attempt to stop it would risk souring relations with the country Russia would have to rely on most for economic recovery (by merest coincidence, on the day before Mr Kohl left for Moscow, the West Germans announced they were sending the Russians food aid worth DM220m, or $130m); and (iii) unity would pose no threat to Soviet security, because the Germans had no intention of extending NATO's front line eastwards. Mr Kohl came to Mr Gorbachev with an Anschluss he couldn't refuse.

Two plus four equals two Now it may again be Mr Gorbachev's turn to tweak history. He has given his general blessing to German unification, but the essential details still have to be sorted out. He would like a united Germany to be, if not neutral then at least free of foreign troops (which would give Russia, even though it had lost East Germany, the vast consolation prize of being the dominant military force in Europe). This week his closest Politburo ally, Mr Alexander Yakovlev, insisted that Soviet troops would leave eastern Germany only when NATO troops left western Germany. That is not the kind of deal Mr Kohl has been talking about. But Mr Kohl's likely difficulties as unity takes shape may swing things Mr Gorbachev's way.

Mr Kohl faces an election this year, perhaps even a panGerman one. He hopes to triumph as the chancellor who brought unity. He could suffer as the chancellor who brought problems. The rush to monetary union risks fuelling inflation (see page 73). The budget bill (West) Germans have to pay for unity will be steep. Besides, at least half the new (East) German voters seem likely to vote Social Democratic.

That could tilt the balance in an all-German election. A Germany-wide Social Democratic victory would almost certainly deliver a Germany free of foreign troops to Mr Gorbachev. The Social Democrats in both Germanies have just agreed that a united Germany should not belong to military alliances. And, even if Mr Kohl does overcome his difficulties and win his election, he may find it hard to make Germans see that they still need foreign armies in their country. Talk of "pan-European security structures" which leave Germany at least semi-detached from the West will be tempting.

The power-play is far from over. In Ottawa this week NATO accepted the German-promoted negotiating formula of two plus four"-two Germanies plus the four victorious powers of 1945, America, Britain, France and Russia. That gives the impression of broad involvement in the shaping of Europe's future. In fact, the only players who really count are the Germans and the Russians. History hangs on the next moves of cool Mr Gorbachev and hot-for-unity Mr Kohl.